Effects of covid-19 pandemic on life expectancy and premature mortality in 2020: Time series analysis in 37 countries

Objective  To estimate the changes in life expectancy and years of life lost in 2020 associated with the covid-19 pandemic. Design  Time series analysis.  Setting  37 upper-middle and high income countries or regions with reliable and complete mortality data.  Participants  Annual all cause mortality data from the Human Mortality Database for 2005-20, harmonised and disaggregated by age and sex.  Main outcome measures  Reduction in life expectancy was estimated as the difference between observed and expected life expectancy in 2020 using the Lee-Carter model. Excess years of life lost were estimated as the difference between the observed and expected years of life lost in 2020 using the World Health Organization standard life table.  Results  Reduction in life expectancy in men and women was observed in all the countries studied except New Zealand, Taiwan, and Norway, where there was a gain in life expectancy in 2020. No evidence was found of a change in life expectancy in Denmark, Iceland, and South Korea. The highest reduction in life expectancy was observed in Russia (men:-2.33, 95% confidence interval-2.50 to-2.17; women:-2.14,-2.25 to-2.03), the United States (men:-2.27,-2.39 to-2.15; women:-1.61,-1.70 to-1.51), Bulgaria (men:-1.96,-2.11 to-1.81; women:-1.37,-1.74 to-1.01), Lithuania (men:-1.83,-2.07 to-1.59; women:-1.21,-1.36 to-1.05), Chile (men:-1.64,-1.97 to-1.32; women:-0.88,-1.28 to-0.50), and Spain (men:-1.35,-1.53 to-1.18; women:-1.13,-1.37 to-0.90). Years of life lost in 2020 were higher than expected in all countries except Taiwan, New Zealand, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, and South Korea. In the remaining 31 countries, more than 222 million years of life were lost in 2020, which is 28.1 million (95% confidence interval 26.8m to 29.5m) years of life lost more than expected (17.3 million (16.8m to 17.8m) in men and 10.8 million (10.4m to 11.3m) in women). The highest excess years of life lost per 100 000 population were observed in Bulgaria (men: 7260, 95% confidence interval 6820 to 7710; women: 3730, 2740 to 4730), Russia (men: 7020, 6550 to 7480; women: 4760, 4530 to 4990), Lithuania (men: 5430, 4750 to 6070; women: 2640, 2310 to 2980), the US (men: 4350, 4170 to 4530; women: 2430, 2320 to 2550), Poland (men: 3830, 3540 to 4120; women: 1830, 1630 to 2040), and Hungary (men: 2770, 2490 to 3040; women: 1920, 1590 to 2240). The excess years of life lost were relatively low in people younger than 65 years, except in Russia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, and the US where the excess years of life lost was >2000 per 100 000.  Conclusion  More than 28 million excess years of life were lost in 2020 in 31 countries, with a higher rate in men than women. Excess years of life lost associated with the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 were more than five times higher than those associated with the seasonal influenza epidemic in 2015.</p

Health and social determinants and outcomes of home cooking: A systematic review of observational studies

Many dietary interventions assume a positive influence of home cooking on diet, health and social outcomes, but evidence remains inconsistent. We aimed to systematically review health and social determinants and outcomes of home cooking. Given the absence of a widely accepted, established definition, we defined home cooking as the actions required for preparing hot or cold foods at home, including combining, mixing and often heating ingredients. Nineteen electronic databases were searched for relevant literature. Peer-reviewed studies in English were included if they focussed mainly on home cooking, and presented post 19th century observational or qualitative data on participants from high/very high human development index countries. Interventional study designs, which have previously been reviewed, were excluded. Themes were summarised using narrative synthesis. From 13,341 unique records, 38 studies e primarily cross-sectional in design e met the inclusion criteria. A conceptual model was developed, mapping determinants of home cooking to layers of influence including non-modifiable, individual, community and cultural factors. Key determinants included female gender, greater time availability and employment, close personal relationships, and culture and ethnic background. Putative outcomes were mostly at an individual level and focused on potential dietary benefits. Findings show that determinants of home cooking are more complex than simply possessing cooking skills, and that potential positive associations between cooking, diet and health require further confirmation. Current evidence is limited by reliance on cross-sectional studies and authors’ conceptualisation of determinants and outcomes

The Lancet Commission on diabetes: using data to transform diabetes care and patient lives

In this Lancet Commission on diabetes, which embodies 4 years of extensive work on data curation, synthesis, and modelling, we urge policy makers, payers, and planners to collectively change the ecosystem, build capacity, and improve the clinical practice environment. Such actions will enable practitioners to systematically collect data during routine practice and to use these data effectively to diagnose early, stratify risks, define needs, improve care, evaluate solutions, and drive changes at patient, system, and policy levels to prevent and control diabetes and other non-communicable diseases. Emerging evidence regarding the possible damaging effects of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 on pancreatic islets implies the potential worsening of the COVID-19 pandemic and the diabetes epidemic, adding to the urgency of these collective actions

Sensitivity of the Cherenkov Telescope Array to a dark matter signal from the Galactic centre

We provide an updated assessment of the power of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) to search for thermally produced dark matter at the TeV scale, via the associated gamma-ray signal from pair-annihilating dark matter particles in the region around the Galactic centre. We find that CTA will open a new window of discovery potential, significantly extending the range of robustly testable models given a standard cuspy profile of the dark matter density distribution. Importantly, even for a cored profile, the projected sensitivity of CTA will be sufficient to probe various well-motivated models of thermally produced dark matter at the TeV scale. This is due to CTA's unprecedented sensitivity, angular and energy resolutions, and the planned observational strategy. The survey of the inner Galaxy will cover a much larger region than corresponding previous observational campaigns with imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. CTA will map with unprecedented precision the large-scale diffuse emission in high-energy gamma rays, constituting a background for dark matter searches for which we adopt state-of-the-art models based on current data. Throughout our analysis, we use up-to-date event reconstruction Monte Carlo tools developed by the CTA consortium, and pay special attention to quantifying the level of instrumental systematic uncertainties, as well as background template systematic errors, required to probe thermally produced dark matter at these energies